Over 65% of participants at a Kentucky high-school science fair committed scientific misconduct. Should students be taught responsible research conduct in early science education?

When two of his Kentucky high-school science students submitted a proposal to
assess scientific misconduct amongst their peers, Skip Zwanzig was
skeptical. “I thought it was just an excuse for them to get out of
research,” said Zwanzig. “But when they brought their results to me I was
floored.”

After Zwanzig approved the project, DuPont Manual High School students Tyler
Smith and Michael Moorin distributed a research-conduct questionnaire to 100
of 500 students that participated in the region’s annual science fair. The
questions focused on two topics: scientific misconduct and parental
education and employment. They found that 65% of respondents had falsified
data, 20% had altered their hypothesis after finishing their study, and 33%
had abused the scientific method in some other way.

A survey of one Kentucky high school's science fair participants found that 65% of respondents had falsified data. Source: Flickr, DrBacchus

Furthermore, the boys found that students with parents who worked in
science-related fields were more likely to advance to higher levels of
science project competition than other students. This advantage is probably
due to the lab access and additional guidance that researcher’s children
receive, something that is difficult to come by for students with fewer
connections, said the boys.

“We knew that there was a problem with the ethics behind [the science fair],
and we wanted to quantify that because a lot of the teachers weren’t really
aware of this and would kind of dismiss it,” said Moorin.

Zwanzig believes teachers were naive in assuming that there was no misconduct
among student research, reflecting a social standard of permissiveness. In
addition, Zwanzig thinks that students perceive these science fairs as a
high-stakes competition, leading them to misconduct such as plagiarism.

“I don’t think the administration thought we would find anything,” said Smith.
But after Zwanzig reviewed the study, he circulated it through other
teachers at Manual to alert them to issues of scientific misconduct.

Zwanzig and his fellow Manual teachers are hoping to promote ethical research
conduct during the school’s future science fairs. The boys’ study provided
one possible solution: an ethics form that discourages scientific
misconduct, which Zwanzig plans to include a ethics form next year.
Additionally, Zwanzig will monitor the projects from conception to
completion to avoid issues with hypothesis manipulation.